Beyond Referrals: Transforming Advisor Growth with Eden Ovadia
Episode 122: This week, Kyle Van Pelt talks with Eden Ovadia, Co-Founder of FINNY. Before FINNY, Eden worked on the private equity team at Boston Consulting Group, where she advised on major M&A deals across the wealth management space. Driven by her background in AI and engineering, and inspired by the wealthtech industry's shifting dynamics, Eden co-founded FINNY to help advisors build predictable, personalized, and tech-enabled organic growth engines.
Eden discusses why the wealth management industry is ripe for innovation and disruption. She also shares why referrals are no longer enough to drive organic growth, and how FINNY rewrites the marketing playbook using machine learning to create hyper-personalized, high-propensity matches between advisors and prospects.
In this episode:
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(00:00) - Intro
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(02:18) - Eden's money moment
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(04:12) - Innovation in wealth management
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(07:28) - Why referrals are no longer enough to grow organically
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(09:25) - How FINNEY rewrites the traditional marketing playbook
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(16:16) - The power of niching and segmentation in organic growth
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(18:14) - Introducing the F-score: FINNY's proprietary machine learning algorithm
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(22:56) - What it takes to build an advisor-first tech stack
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(24:18) - FINNY's future goals
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(25:39) - FINNY's outlook on the future of the wealth management industry
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(28:51) - Eden's Milemarker Minute
Key Takeaways
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Referrals are great. But they're no longer enough to grow organically. Referrals are a linear expansion tied to an advisor's personal time and energy. True scalability requires building an engine that works in the background for you.
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Consumer behavior has changed. Your growth strategy should, too. The next generation of clients shops for everything digitally, including financial guidance. They expect personalized, tech-enabled experiences.
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Niche and segment. The firms breaking out from the pack are the ones that define exactly who they serve. Not "retirees," but "retirees selling a dental practice." Not "business owners," but "HVAC operators with succession on their minds." Precision builds trust, and trust accelerates conversion.
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Organic growth must become intentional and operationalized. The fastest-growing firms don't stumble into growth. They measure it, build systems for it, and treat it with the same seriousness as investing or planning. Growth becomes predictable when it becomes part of your operating rhythm.
Quotes
"Referrals will always be king. The problem with referrals is that they grow with every advisor's time, energy, and resources. It doesn't scale exponentially. It scales with your time and money" ~ Eden Ovadia
"If you're an advisor who wants to build a generational business, you need to start building and investing effort in creating a growth engine, because referrals will decline year over year." ~ Eden Ovadia
"If you believe that there's going to be a lack of a hundred thousand advisors in the near future, we view FINNY as the tool that can serve as the optimization layer between the supply of financial advisors and the demand for financial advice." ~ Eden Ovadia
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